Uptown Funk Funkified

Collected Links (06/04/2022)

• A Poetry Reading by Mark Strand at the Library of Congress (1987) -- @ 9:10 Carlos Drummond de Andrade's Looking for Poetry (Mark Strand translator) (the reading/poem leading to this post); also: de Andrade's Boy Crying in the Night @ 6:05, Your Shoulders Hold Up the World @ 7:21; Strand's Narrative Poetry @ 13:36 (meh -- N.B. a narrative poem about narrative poetry), Grete Samsa's Letter to H @ 20:10 (again, meh -- N.B. a prose poem), Virgento Ad Julianus [sp?] @ 24:51, Luminism @ 26:08, The Famous Scene @ 28:52 (lovely, in its manner -- is good poetry hyperbole?), Always @ 30:28 (also lovely), Violent Storm @ 33:18 (early Strand . . . and lovely), Keeping Things Whole @ 36:45 (his most famous poem? he always seems to read it -- he precedes reading this by saying he doesn't like it because it took him too little time to write), Seven Days @ 38:33 (meh -- but this supposedly took him a long time to write), Shooting Whales @ 42:08 (richer than a Winslow Homer painting), [although Strand elides the title, next is My Mother on an Evening in Late Summer] @ 46:14 (very good), Viewing the Coast [is this it? Black Sea] @ 49:16 (wonderful), Alcetus [sp?] @ 54:02, and The Empire of Chance @ 56:02 (meh).
• Exceptionnelle démo de beatbox par MB14 - En Aparté slyt (Rocks on many levels)
• Former Chief Justice Rehnquist's long addiction to Placidyl -- imagine if a "liberal" Justice was well-known, as Rehnquist was, to have such am addiction -- would not most of the current press go nuts?
• "In The Number Ones, [Tom Breihan, a columnist at Stereogum, is] reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958 . . ." Via MetaFilter
  
• I've been taking a short hiatus on vomiting over Fox News
• "Mr. Spock" "sings" "Twinkle Twinkle Little Earth" on Leonard Nimoy's album "Music from Outer Space."

Collected Links (06/03/2022)

• "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (Korean Edition)" -- from John
• Chief Justice Roberts supposedly wrote both the opinion of the Court and dissent in ACA case ultimately upholding "Obamacare." He initially favored the challengers, wrote that as the main opinion, then changed his view, and wrote what then became the main opinion, and his original draft was largely kept by the dissenters. [Note the opinion was split on the several issues it considered; some Justices joined with Roberts on some issues and some on others. Opinion: National Federation of Ind. Business v. Sebelius; See also (Forbes -- different article with essentially same story).]
• Kurt Gödel supposedly discovered a "loophole" in the Constitution while he was studying to be a United States citizen -- the loophole would have allowed the country to become a dictatorship. He told this to the citizenship examiner, who decided to move past it (not that his view would have prevented him from becoming a citizen . . .). Albert Einstein and economist Oskar Morgenstern were apparently present at the citizenship ceremony/examination. Gödel apparently never told anyone what the "loophole" was. [N.B. I can think of perhaps a half dozen ways within the Constitution -- as I think many can -- in which the U.S. could become a dictatorship -- but I also know none of these potential paths are realistic.]
• While many people (including many film critics -- who are, it turns out, a type of people), have tried to excuse the extraordinarily racist and pro-KKK film Birth of a Nation as just how people (meaning white people, I guess) thought at the time, i.e. as a product of its age, Eugene Debs and others called it out for the racist and hateful crap it is. [N.B. Debs was from Terre Haute, Indiana, where I lived from ages c. 11-18; Debs views were not emblematic of the community I knew, but, to the contrary Terre Haute stands out as about the most politically/culturally anti-Debs place I've ever known.]
• Pachelbel's Canon in D, performed on original instruments -- by Voices of Music -- and a equally beautiful version by the Nippon Philharmonic Orchestra.

Collected Links (06/01/2022)

• Linguistic Relativity (Sapir-Whorf) -- Wikipedia -- well written and thorough.
• "Gravity is Not a Force" -- Veritassium -- really great but does not define what is meant by a "force" -- i.e. the title is misleading because he means "gravity is an effect of space-time, which effect some people might call a "force" but it is not a "force" acting independently from that effect (and let's not get too deeply into gravitons or the Standard Model or gravitational waves)." In the Standard Model bosons are particles that form fields, but bosons are also the consequence of fields. Einstein famously did not believe in "spooky action at a distance," and the idea of a space-time field with a mediating particle (gravitons) is consistent with General Relativity. So, saying "gravity is not a force" is a little misleading since it ignores what might be meant, when closely examined, by "force."
• Newton's method of calculating pi -- Veritassium -- superlative video --  includes getting from πr to πr² -- also includes great stuff on Pascal's triangle in negative numbers and fractions and continuums -- shows (without overtly saying so) why Newton was a brilliant mathematician -- Newton's method developed from integration and series and development of (1+x)².
• Newton's Pendulum (Gangnam Style)
• Göbekli Tepe -- at Reddit -- at Wikipedia -- quote from Reddit: "built around 9500BC while Britain was still connected to Europe and humans hunted mammoths in Siberia. We are closer in time to the construction of Stonehenge and the Giza Pyramids, than [Stonehenge and the ancient Egyptians] were to [Göbekli Tepe]."
• Fox News: "Biden keeps repeating false Second Amendment claim, despite repeated fact checks" --  -- the quoted language that is asserted to be false is "You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed." Fox News, of course, provides no evidence that ordinary people could just go out and buy cannons. Fox News, of course, provides no evidence that, in the words of the Second Amendment, that ordinary people would "keep and bear" cannons. It seems absurd to believe (without evidence, natch) that some people kept cannons, say, at their households or even on their person. Cannons at the time were very difficult to make. The only evidence is that cannons were bought and sold for military or quasi-military use. (N.B. "quasi-military" because the U.S. military as a body was loosely organized and depended on state militias and not in any substantial way on a federal military body in the years after the American Revolution. See, e.g.) Fox News, citing Politico. claims all weapons were unregulated because it asserts there were no formal federal gun laws until 1934. That's nuts. There were numerous state gun restrictions before that time. Moreover, restrictions on ownership (and practical inability and common understandings of prohibitions) were a product of the common law not written laws or regulations, as law at that time was driven by common law not statutory law. Fox News's and Politico's suggestions to the contrary  are, frankly, wrong and indicated of legal and historical ignorance. Indeed, the Constitution's explicit provision for issuing Letters of Marque and Reprisal shows the understanding that the use of weapons such as cannons had to be authorized -- it was not some sort of freely floating around right. Fox News also states as a fact "The Second Amendment as it is written does not limit who can 'keep and bear arms' or what kind of arms people can keep and bear." Actually, the Second Amendment does not say any types of weapon or any amount of weapons can be owned. The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly made this clear (see specifically Section III of the Court's opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, which is the watershed "pro-gun rights" decision from the Supreme Court and still makes this clear). Indeed, the clerks for Justices Scalia and Stevens recently made this clear -- Scalia and Stevens wrote, respectively, the Court's opinion and main dissent in Heller -- in a lengthy and detailed op-ed.  The assertion that Biden's statement is false, extends back to Politifact, which called it "dubious," not false, i.e. not a lie. It was "dubious" because Biden did not, gratuitously, point to a specific case where someone was prohibited from owning a cannon. But that is incorrect: it puts the "proof" requirement on the wrong person: if you say private individuals could go around owning cannons, in the sense we mean, not for military purposes as they existed then, then I think the onus is on you to prove it. As discussed above, I think that notion -- that private laypeople owned cannons -- edges on the absurd for several reasons. Having that view, as Biden evidently does, is  not a lie. Fox News's story is intended to cement in the reader the belief that Biden is dishonest. Biden, like all of us, makes plenty of mistakes. He certainly says many things poorly. He has, without question, told lies during his life and long political career. This the statement here, right or wrong (and it may be right) isn't a lie.. Fox News knows that and goes ahead, anyway. Again, this story was pushed to me today by Fox News. It's not like Fox News is also pushing stories that are truthful. 
• Fox News, again! Michael Sussman, a lawyer connected with Hillary Clinton's 2016 Presidential campaign, was found not guilty of lying to the FBI. The supposed "lie" was hawked by Fox News as a major scandal involving Clinton and the Democrats. Fox News repeatedly suggested the supposed "lies" were actual criminal conduct and involved "massive fraud" and was, in fact, "the biggest political scandal in modern history." Sussman was prosecuted by a special prosecutor selected by Trump; the supposed "lie" involved Trump's alleged wrongful conduct in relation to Russia. So, there was a patent conflict of interest from the get-go as Trump appointed a prosecutor to investigate and prosecute a political opponent's campaign over statement's about Trump. According to Mother Jones (on a story pushed to me, BTW), the special prosecutor's investigation has actually strengthened the case against Trump. Anyway, the jury was not out long before ruling for Sussman and rejecting the Trump special prosecutor's prosecution. Fox News's response? The result was due to "jury nullification." "D.C. juries are famous for failing to follow the facts and the law." The jury was "biased" and composed of "Hilary Clinton peers." And more and more. Fox News is not just mendacious but prolific.

Take Two on Pharrell Williams's "Get Happy" (Pomplamoose)

Pharrell Williams's original music video here.  

And a Despicable Me version with lyrics here.

Daft Punk's "get Lucky" here.

Take One on Pharrell Williams's "Get Happy" (Christopher Bill)

The ... Um ... Safety Dance? (A Dance Movie Mash-up)

Via Purple Clover.

The Banco Sabadell "Flashmob"

Sorting Algorithms with Sound (Because Who Doesn't Love a Good Sorting Algorithm?)

This video shows sped up versions of sorting algorithms with associated sounds from a GNU licensed program called The Sound of Sorting (link to description which contains the program download info).  It was created by Timo Bingmann, a  Ph.D student in the "Institute of Theoretical Informatics, Algorithmics" in Karlsruhe, Germany, to provide much better background (see, e.g.) and more variants than a prior YouTube version created YouTube user andrut.

Andrut is good enough in the about section of his video to describe prior art, and there's even more including an old QBasic sorting program (SLT), as Bingmann points out.  (BTW, on the video above and on Bingmann's program, as well as on the video below, you'll want the sound turned on, way on, since it is integral to the video -- it's called "The Sound of Sorting" for Christssake. On the video of the QBasic program, on the other hand, you'll want the sound off, very, very off, because it will rapidly drive you insane.)

Should you happen to find yourself with a surfeit of time you may also be interested in videos of the "bubble sort" or the "quick sort" treated as a Hungarian folk dances, the "merge sort" as a Transylvanian German folk dance, or the "select sort" as a Gypsy folk dance.

But your time is valuable so here is just andrut's short, very nice video from three years ago:

Friday Music: Michele Kwan Plays Guzheng Covering Sweet Child O' Mine

Inaugurating a new feature at the absolutely feature packed blog Galileo Feynman, here is our first installment of Friday Music:

The Beach Boys Shred I Get Around

Via Tim!

The Landfill Harmonic Orchestra

It's Music Wednesday!

As everyone knows, we always begin our Mondays with some uplifitng music! Today's hit:

"Wings" and the Death of Paul Sampleton, Jr.

Yesterday two teens and an adult were arrested for the murder of a 14 year old -- he was killed to steal his shoes.  He apparently had a bunch of high end shoes and just gotten home from school for holiday break when was shot and then strapped to a chair and left to die.

The whole thing as heartbreaking on so many levels, this kind of thing happens so often, much too often. Rather than pontificate or get lost in the heartbreak, just this:

A Beautiful Trombone Solo

This is lovely. Via Stellar.

It's Monday, It's Raining Somewhere, and, well, It's 30 Years Since the Death of Karen Carpenter

Steve Goodman. I'm Just Sayin'.

When I was in undergraduate school Goodman came through and sang. Incredible. He died not too long after (this video well predates that).

Losing My Religion in a Major Scale rather than a Minor

Via Boing Boing, this is REM's classic Losing My Religion with the minor scale notes digitally converted a major. The shift is both subtle and shocking:

From MajorScaled Tv at Facebook.

Here's the original:

Heart Performing Led Zeppelin? Actually ... Yes (no, no, not the band Yes, "yes," as in this is actually really good)

Via Boing Boing:

Bonobo: Cirrus

In the words of Mark Farauenfelder of Boing Boing, "best viewed after licking your pet Sonoran Desert toad."  (My experience was the toad is actually not necessary -- this is just a great video.)